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Former Olympic swimming champ Mark Spitz may have gone off the deep end when he said yesterday that a race between him and Michael Phelps would end in a tie.

“I know everything there is to know about how to beat Michael, and he would know how to beat me,” said Spitz during an appearance at Grand Central Terminal, where he held the copy of the Sports Illustrated on whose cover Phelps strikes a Spitz-like pose with his eight medals.

“We’d probably tie,” he added

Phelps’ eight golds at the Beijing Games eclipsed Spitz’s record of seven, won in 1972 at Munich.

Spitz, 58, said he is “relieved” that the 23-year-old swimmer shattered his record – saying the feat couldn’t “have happened to a nicer guy.”

At one point, as he thumbed through the SI, which features Phelps posing as he did for a poster in 1972. Spitz playfully put his finger over one of Phelps’ medals to cover it up.

“I saw this [Tuesday],” Spitz said of the SI cover as he chuckled. “It’s pretty amazing.”

Spitz said he knew Phelps would break his record in Beijing, calling the feat “epic.”